


A Matter of Time

by insignificant457



Category: Nikolai Series - Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo, The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, post king of scars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-17 12:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20620871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insignificant457/pseuds/insignificant457
Summary: "You will see in time. When he grows old and you grow only more powerful."Zoya finds her life with Nikolai to be equal parts triumph and tragedy. Triumph that it should happen at all, and tragedy that it should come to an end.A series of moments throughout the married life of the king and queen of Ravka.





	1. Chapter 1

She doesn’t notice it for the first few years. They are still both young, and he’s three years older than her anyway. And maybe there’s still the impossibility-improbability-of it all that’s distracted her from it. She had never let herself believe that she would end up here, that the people would accept her, that Nikolai would return her feelings, that she would want him to, and all of that has blinded her to the elephant in the room. 

That elephant being that she is one of the most powerful Grisha ever to live, and that with all that power, she is destined to live a long life—long enough to rival even the Darkling’s. 

It is not the idea of eternity that creeps up on her; sharing her mind with a dragon saint has acquainted her with the concept. No, her eternity is not the thing that she fails to notice. It is the fact that she will be the only one there to live it. Eventually, she will lose the people she is closest to, one by one, until there is no one left to remember these moments but her.

The realization comes at an odd time, not during one of life’s largest moments. Not when she first blurs the lines between the Grisha orders in the Saints’ Fold. Not when she, for once in her life, puts Ravka second and tells Nikolai that she cannot sit by and watch him marry someone who would love nothing more than to put a knife in his heart and let her sister march across their borders, and diplomacy be damned but Zoya would make a far better queen than Ehri anyway so wouldn’t she be the better choice for Ravka? (This last part is a feeble argument at best, one she could tear apart with very little effort, but it is during a moment of weakness and she got what she wanted in the end, so she can forgive herself for it just this once). She doesn’t realize it on her wedding day, or her coronation, or on the day she gives birth to her first child, Tsesarevich Dominik Nikolaevich Lantsov. No, what it takes for the reality of her situation to sink in is a thinly veiled, vaguely sexist comment made by one of the West Ravkan dukes in the ballroom of the Grand Palace during what is shaping up to be the worst of Nikolai’s birthday parties, including the one that ended abruptly with the Darkling’s attack and the death of the Crown Prince and the beginning of a Civil War.

At least that one had ended with a little adrenaline in her veins.

It is Nikolai’s thirtieth birthday party, and it is a ridiculously stuffy affair that she will never forgive Genya for insisting upon. But with the upcoming tax reforms, it is important to make the nobility feel appreciated and give them a reason to feel superior now that they would be forced to pay a larger percentage of their income to the crown for redistribution. Thus, the invitation to celebrate a milestone in the young king’s life and dress up in finery and eat far too little of the rich food because their corsets and doublets did not have much give was sent out. Zoya has lost count of the number of courses that have come and gone when the disgustingly old Duke Ivanov, sitting across the table from them says jovially to Nikolai, “Well, Your Majesty, it seems that though you’ve grown another year older, your beautiful wife has managed to skip aging completely. She is just as exquisite as I remember her being when I attended your wedding nearly five years ago.” This comment is accentuated by a lingering gaze down what he can see of Zoya’s figure while she is seated. 

Zoya raises an eyebrow in a look of such disdain that it is a testament to the man’s courage—or stupidity—that he does not run from the room or start scraping at her feet for her forgiveness. Nikolai gives the man a smile that does not quite reach his eyes and says, “Commander Nazyalensky is just as beautiful and as deadly as always. Neither of which I would ever take for granted.”

The conversation moves on, but something about the comment sticks with her, and it is not the look the duke gave her as he said it. She is far too used to those. No, the feeling left behind is less of skin-crawling disgust and more the feeling of having walked up a staircase, sure there was one more step, and finding nothing but air underneath her foot. 

_Your wife seems to have skipped aging entirely_.

It is true, Zoya looks the same as in the paintings commissioned for their wedding, but many would attribute that to her still being young and naturally beautiful, or maybe to her half-Suli heritage. Zoya remembers how she, along with the Triumvirate and the Bataar twins, had spent the morning mercilessly teasing Nikolai for getting old, even though the Bataar twins were twenty-nine, fast approaching thirty, and the rest of them only a year or two behind that. Nikolai took it in good humor, cracking jokes along with them and telling them that if they weren’t going to respect the crown, they ought to at least respect their elders. Now those jokes leave a sour taste in her mouth, because this is the moment it dawns on her. 

Nikolai is getting older. He will continue to get older and older and then he will die. 

And Zoya will still be just as exquisite as she was on her wedding day. 

Because she knows that an eternity awaits her, and she has made peace with that, welcomed it even, just as she welcomed the dragon that nestles near her heart. But it had not even occurred to her that making peace with her eternity meant accepting the fact that he wasn’t going to get one. Because even though everything about Nikolai is so much larger than life, despite the fact that he is filled to the brim and overflowing with enthusiasm and optimism and a maddening exuberance, he is and always has been otkazats’ya—abandoned. By power and by the eternity that such power guarantees. 

The missed-step feeling follows her for the rest of the night, and it does not go unnoticed by her ever-observant husband. He does not mention it until they are back in their own chambers for the night. He asks her what is wrong while she sits on the end of their bed and massages feeling back into her feet after a night spent in uncomfortable shoes. When she tries to deny that anything is wrong he fixes her with a raised eyebrow and says “Don’t try to play this off with me, Nazyalensky.” Despite the fact that they are married, he still uses her last name affectionately like this, most likely because he knows she would not tolerate pet names. “Count Kirigin asked you to his midsummer revels and the look you gave him was only mildly scathing. You’ve never given him anything less than emotionally devastating in all the time you’ve known him. You were distracted. What is it?”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t meet his gaze. “I’ve never been one for parties or sycophants. You know that.”

“Yes, of course, but over the years spent in my wonderful company, you’ve picked up some excellent techniques for acting as if you enjoy, or at least tolerate, said parties and sycophants. Tonight, not so much. So what’s got you in such a bad mood? Was it my cologne? Because you bought me this one, you know, and I wore it for you. If it’s too much—”

Zoya rolls her eyes and strolls across the room to deposit her jewelry on the vanity. “And my taste was impeccable as always. You smell fine.”

“Is it because you’re married to an old man now? Because I assure you, everything works the same as it did yesterd—what?” Because she’d flinched at the phrase “old man” and of course he had noticed, even mid-innuendo, because she couldn’t get anything past him, not anymore. 

“Nothing, just…you’re not old. You have plenty of life left so that’s really just a stupid joke.” She hates how strained her words sound, and she doesn’t want to look at him, so she focuses on untangling a miniscule knot in her necklace, even as she feels him walk up behind her. 

“It’s the same stupid joke you’ve been making all day,” he says softly from just behind her right shoulder. And then, even softer, “Have you just now realized you’re going to outlive me by, oh, two or three millennia?” Her gaze snaps up to meet his in the mirror. He gives her a sad, lopsided smile. “I really thought you would have picked up on that by now. You're usually so sharp.” 

“It’s not that I didn’t know,” she says, gaze dropping to the dragon scale cuffs around her wrist. “I suppose I just never…” He wraps his arms around her waist and presses a kiss to her temple. They stay that way for while before he whispers, “Do me a favor, Nazyalensky. Don’t start mourning me until after the funeral.” 

“Okay,” she whispers back.

It’s a promise she almost keeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally going to be one long document containing the entire story, but it's been sitting on my computer since I started it in March, and its clocking in at 9k and I still have to finish it. So I've decided to post it in increments to convince myself to get my ass in gear and write the sad part I’ve been avoiding. I'll try to post fairly regularly until it's done. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to leave a "write the sad part you coward" or anything else in the comments.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter. This one's happier than the last one. It's also a little bit shorter oops.

Life goes on. She gives birth to a second child a year later, a girl named after the bravest woman she ever knew. Princess Liliyana, like her older brother, shows an extraordinary affinity for summoning from an early age. However, while Dom, like his mother, finds the wind a friend and ally, Lili, like her father, is drawn to the sea. _Salt water in the veins_, he’d said affectionately the first time they’d seen her do it in the bath as a baby. It’s not a problem for Zoya, as over the years she has become adept at wielding every branch of Etherealki power, and she trains both her children to be soldiers the same way that Nikolai educates them both in statecraft—thoroughly, but with the hope that the children will never have to use those skills the way their parents did. 

Because one day, a rare day where Nikolai has been able to end his meetings with his advisers early, and Zoya allows the children to stop their lessons to have a day as a family, he tells her his grand plan. They are relaxing in the sun on a secluded part of the lakeshore, a safe haven Nikolai claims he found as a child, while exploring with their son’s namesake. There is no one here to bother them, no Grisha students, no ministers of finance, no David or Genya or Tolya or Tamar, just the four of them, a normal family for once. The children are splashing in the shallows. At nine, Dom is much bigger than his younger sister, but the four-year-old still douses him head to toe with a summoned wave. He laughs it off, and it has never been more apparent to Zoya that he inherited his father’s temperament rather than his mother’s. 

Zoya is sitting on the blanket they’d eaten a picnic lunch on, while Nikolai rests his head in her lap. His eyes are closed, hair mussed, and several of his shirt buttons are undone. It is the least kingly she has seen him look outside of their private chambers, and she can’t help but savor the moment. She trails her fingers lightly over his sun-warmed skin, tracing the scar from the thorn wood all those years ago. She does not regret becoming queen—she enjoys her work, and she is good at it. But moments like this make her wonder what it would be like if they did not have the weight of a country on their shoulders. 

And then almost as if reading her mind, Nikolai says, “What would you say if I told you I wanted to dissolve the monarchy?” 

Zoya’s hand stills. “I’d ask you if you’d taken any knocks to the head recently. _Are_ you telling me that you want to dissolve the monarchy?”

He opens his eyes and meets her gaze. “Well obviously not right this instant. And not entirely. I want to put a plan into action to transition Ravka into a constitutional monarchy. With elected officials. Maybe a prime minister.”

“I see. And when would this be happening?”

“Over the next few years. It’s been fourteen years since the end of the Civil War. Eleven since we bested the Darkling for good and managed to keep the country from war a second time. I think maybe it’s time to start laying the groundwork for a transition of power into the hands of the people.”

“You’d relinquish control to a prime minister so easily? Your one true love in the hands of someone else? I never thought I'd see the day.” 

“Realistically, we wouldn’t be able to hold elections for at least another five years. Possibly more. Change is slow in this country of ours. But I don’t always want to be chained to it. Ravka may no longer be a drowning man, but she is still a grand lady in need of courting, and I’m getting too old for the seduction game.”

“You’re thirty-six. You’re not even middle aged.”

“Are you saying I’m still capable of seducing a woman? Because I seem to recall you saying I was a worthy prospect ‘for now’ over ten years ago. You made it seem like the clock was ticking on all of that. It’s why I married you so fast.”

“You’re getting off-topic.”

He sighs and closes his eyes again. “I just don’t want to spend my whole life trying to keep this country afloat, only to have someone put a hole in its hull after I’m gone. I’m not saying Dom would be the one to sink the ship, but maybe someone after him. Obviously, you’d be here to keep everything in line, but you shouldn’t have to. Eventually we have to turn the country over to its people.”

“It’s a good idea,” she assures him, “I just didn’t think your ego would allow you to trust someone else to make the right decisions.” 

“Well, obviously I’d still have a large say—veto power, executive authority on some matters. At least until everything settles in.”

“This is Ravka. If we wait for it all to settle in, we’ll be waiting an eternity.” 

“Very true. So are you on board?” 

She gives him a smirk and says, “We’ve put a lot of work into this country, and what you’re planning may undo all of that in an instant—”

“—But I’m just too cute to say no to?”

She rolls her eyes and continues as if there was no interruption, “—but over the years I’ve come to realize there’s more between your ears than cobwebs and dust.”

“The occasional tumbleweed?”

“Precisely. Or maybe enough time spent in your company has rotted my brain. Either way, I’m on board.” 

He grins up at her, and opens his mouth to say something else when Lili and Dom, obviously tired of being ignored, team up to send a massive wave their way. It soaks them both to the skin, and while Zoya dries herself with a quick gust of wind, she leaves Nikolai there to sputter and shake the water out of his hair and eyes like a mangy dog. He looks from her to the children, standing in the shallows giggling, and says “Retaliation?”

“And let your otkazats’ya ass bring me down? I don’t think so. This is every Lantsov for themselves.” She summons another wave, and uses the wind to divide it in three, soaking her whole family in one fell swoop. The four of them laugh and splash in the shallows as the sun sets, and she mentally prepares herself for the sun to set on this era of Ravka. She only hopes the dawn that will come will be even brighter. And as she watches her husband throw both children over his shoulders and spin them around with shrieks of delight, she’s filled with a rare moment of optimism, because if she’s made it through everything to get here, surely she can help him give Ravka an independence that would allow moments like this to be a little less rare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, the flu and real life caught up with me, as well as a desire to add in this scene, which I hadn't had before. I'm still not 100% satisfied, but here it is anyway. 
> 
> This takes place about two years before the last chapter.

Zoya is in the middle of a lesson with her youngest Summoners, including her own son, when the alarm bells ring for the first time in nearly a decade. The bells signify an attack on the palace, and Zoya immediately falls back into the mindset of a soldier, moving to guard the door and giving instructions to the children to head for the tunnels hidden in the walls of the Little Palace that will lead them to shelters where they will be safe from attack. But before she can reach the door, Tolya grabs her by the arm and hauls her back toward the tunnels herself. He’s already got Dom by the hand.

“What are you doing?” she protests, trying to free her arm from his grip. “I need to watch the doors so the students—”

“I’m sorry Your Majesty, but my first priority in the event of an attack on the palace is to protect the crown.”

Her friends never call her “Your Majesty,” except in a teasing or blatantly sarcastic way. To hear Tolya say it with such grave intensity in a situation like this makes her go cold inside. She knows that she is the queen, obviously, as it’s a title she’s had for eight years now, but sometimes she still forgets her importance to the country now. Being married to Nikolai feels so different than she ever would have imagined being married to a king would feel that her status slips her mind every now and then.

She understands the need to protect the crown, and she knows that Tolya is only doing his job, but when it involves leaving a room full of children behind to save herself first, she feels sickeningly like the Darkling. She will not stand for it.

She grinds her heels in, and manages to wrench her arm away. “Zoya—” Tolya starts, sternly, but she cuts him off.

“Get Dom to the shelter if you have to, but I won’t leave these children behind to find their own way. I’m the most powerful Grisha alive, I’ll be fine.” She starts to direct the children into the tunnels, while keeping an eye on the doors and windows in case she needs to be on the defensive. Once every last child has been evacuated into the shelters and the doors sealed until the guards have eliminated the threat, she starts off down a separate tunnel that leads to the Grand Palace, and the top security shelter for the royal family and key advisors. She meets Tolya again halfway down the tunnel, coming back for her, and he hauls her forward faster. She wants to dig her heels in and protest being manhandled like this, but she remembers the attack on the royal family the night of Nikolai’s twenty-second birthday, when the Second Army was nearly slaughtered to the man, and she knows that Tolya does too.

Even before she arrives in the safe room, she can hear Nikolai’s raised voice as he shouts at someone about needing to leave “—because my wife is missing and I—”

Her arrival on the heels of a Shu giant cuts off the end of his sentence. She sees him arguing with Tamar, who is blocking the door, while simultaneously bouncing a crying baby Liliyana in his arms. Dom is clinging to Nikolai’s leg, looking more scared than she’s ever seen. Her eyes meet Nikolai’s as Toyla locks the heavy door in place, and the look of relief there is so intense it steals whatever breath she had left after the pace they set to this place. He pushes past Tamar and wraps her in a hug that threatens to smother the baby between them.

Zoya had learned to build walls early. When she was small, she would watch her mother and father fight over the weight they carried on their shoulders from trying to keep their family afloat, and somewhere along the way she watched the love between them deteriorate into nothing. Then she watched whatever love her mother had for her shrivel up and die until she was willing to sell off her nine year old to a rich pedophile to relieve the strain of raising her. All of that had taught Zoya that love was conditional and temporary, and she had built walls and cultivated thorns to keep from falling into the trap of loving someone.

But now, even with the stress of keeping a country together, even after eight years and two children, she is still coming to terms with the fact that Nikolai’s love for her is an bottomless well, and no matter what she does, she won’t find the bottom. He doesn’t scold her for putting the Grisha children first, for risking her life even though she knows she is a top priority asset. He just holds her to him and she feels him breathe out a sigh of relief at knowing she is here, and she is safe. The same sigh courses its way through her own body, and she knows she would be content to stay here in the circle of his arms forever.

But they cannot, because they are the king and queen and they have to deal with the threat to their country.

Hours later, when they’ve exhausted every possible topic of conversation and concern that their guards could possibly have, Tamar sends them off to get some sleep before they make the evacuation from the shelters in the morning. According to Nikolai’s pocket watch, it is well past three o’clock in the morning. There is a room in the back of the shelter where they have left the children in the care of a guard. The room is stocked with food and water, a single large bed, and an Fabrikated locking mechanism for another level of safety in the event a threat were to make it past the barriers into the larger shelter. 

Nikolai thanks the guard and sends him out to get some rest while another guard takes up a post at the door. There is a part of Zoya that will never get used to this preferential treatment. Even after having been a member of the Grisha Triumvirate for over a decade, and a member of the royal family for almost as long, some part of her is still that peasant girl who hadn’t meant anything to anyone. 

She is exhausted from the day’s excitement and fear and the mind-numbing conversations with their advisers, and she wants nothing more than to fall in bed and never get up again, but before she can do that, Nikolai has grabbed hold of her and pulled her into another hug, not as desperate as the first, but there is still a tension there that she hasn’t felt from him in a long time. 

“You know that I would never want you to change, right?” He asks her softly. It is not what she expects him to say in this moment, in this place, in this situation. 

“Of course,” she responds warily. And she does know this. It is one of the things that made her fall in love with him in the first place. 

“I don’t want you to change. Not for me, not for anyone. Having said that…” He takes a deep breath, and if she hadn’t had her head against his chest, she may not have noticed the shakiness of that breath, but she does. It rattles something deep within her to hear that noise. “Having said that, I also don’t want to have to raise our children alone while also trying to run out country.” 

_Ah_, she realizes. It’s about her staying behind. She knows he means well, and that he was truly concerned for her, but the feeling of an oncoming reprimand about not putting herself before a group of children raises her hackles. She pulls away from him so she can look him in the eye. In no uncertain terms, she says “I will not value my life above those of the Grisha children in my care. I may have a fancy title and a crown, but I am still a General of the Second Army and a member of the Grisha Triumvirate, and as such, the best equipped person to make sure those children all made it out of there safely. I hope what happened today was a one time thing, but if it ever happens again, you should know I will not do a single thing differently.”

“I know that. I do. And it’s selfish and horrible of me to ask you to do otherwise. But just this once, can’t I—”

“No,” she cuts him off. “You can’t. Maybe if you’d married Ehri you could. But you didn’t.”

“You’re right.” He gives her a weary but fond smile and presses his forehead against hers. “I married Zoya Nazyalensky, and Zoya Nazyalensky moves for no man. Not even the king of Ravka.” He squeezes her hand, and, miraculously, drops the subject.

They stand there in silence for a long while, before there is a rustling from the bed, and Dom sits up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Mama? Papa? Is it time to go?”

“Not yet, _malysh_,” Zoya says, going to sit at the edge of the bed. As her weight shifts the bed, Lili also wakes up. Nikolai pulls the little girl onto his lap before removing his boots and settling back onto the bed, one child tucked under each arm. 

“What’s going to happen when we leave?” Dom asks, worry in his voice. 

“Well,” Nikolai says slowly, obviously trying not to scare the children, but she knows he hates to mislead them as well. “We’ll have to see the damage and go from there. But everything will be alright, I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” he says, then looks around for anyone to overhear, despite the fact that they are sequestered behind a solid foot of Grisha steel. “Mama told me.” 

Zoya raises an eyebrow at him as Lili asks, “How does Mama know?”

“Oh, Mama knows everything. The women in her family can see the future in the stars.” 

Zoya is suddenly hit by the memory of the two of them riding in a carriage after she grabbed him from a goose farm, when she’d told him the same thing, and spun all sorts of stories about his life. She’d almost forgotten. 

“That’s not true,” Dom says skeptically, then looks over at her. “Is it?”

“Oh, yes,” Zoya says, “After all, I told your father he would have many badly behaved children, and look what happened.” She runs her fingers through her son’s already sleep mussed hair. She knows what Nikolai is doing, bringing up this story from long ago. Apparently, her ridiculous tale had given him comfort all those years ago, and now he is looking to her to do the same for their obviously shaken children. So she lies down on the bed with the rest of her family and spins a story of sunshine and roses and happiness until the children fall asleep. She thinks Nikolai might be asleep as well, but he squeezes her hand when she runs out of words, and just that single motion feels so much like acceptance—of her, of her choice when the attack came—that she finds herself certain that she has no clairvoyant abilities whatsoever, because she never could have seen this moment in the stars. But that’s alright, because over the years, she’s come to appreciate the surprise.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this was supposed to be somewhat chronological, but I've completely thrown that out the window. This takes place shortly after where I imagine KOS 2 ending.

Two months into their engagement, Zoya finds Nikolai in his office, staring hard at a letter in his hand with an unreadable expression on his face. He doesn’t look up when she enters, so she clears her throat, making him jump. “Sorry,” he mumbles as she perches on the edge of his desk. He runs a hand over his face but doesn’t put the letter down for her to read. 

“More bad news? What is it this time?”

“My father,” he says dejectedly.

Zoya cocks her head in surprise. “Opjer? We handled that months ago.”

“No, not him. My…the former king. He’s dead. The letter is from my mother.”

“Oh,” she says softly, unsure how to tread in this conversation. She certainly has no love for the old king. She always knew he was an old pervert, staring too long at the female servants, touching noble ladies and female Grisha on the smalls of their backs whenever he spoke with them, to say nothing of the things he did to Genya. She found him repulsive when he was on the throne, and has thought little of him since he was exiled. For Genya, she is even happy he is dead. But by the look on Nikolai’s face, she can tell his thoughts on the man he once thought of as his father are far less black and white. 

“She wrote me after news of our engagement reached them. She wanted to know if they would be allowed at the wedding. I hadn’t come up with an answer yet.” She knows how heavily he feels the burden of his scoundrel father—she sees the latent guilt in his eyes every time he looks at Genya. The decision of whether or not to invite his parents to his wedding must have weighed heavily on him, torn between what would look good for the country and what might destroy one of his closest friends. Now the burden of that choice is somewhat lifted. 

“Your mother can come to the wedding, I don’t mind,” she says. It is not the right thing to say, but it’s the only thing she can think of at this moment. They sit there in silence for several minutes, until Nikolai, as is customary, breaks it. 

“I don’t know why I’m upset,” his tone is full of self-loathing, and although she sometimes wishes he were less arrogant, she hates to hear this note creep in, so she tries to reassure him, even though she doesn’t really understand why he is upset either. 

“He was your father,” she says awkwardly, desperate to fill the silence, “it’s alright to be upset that he’s dead.”

“He wasn’t, though. My father, I mean. Not by birth, and not in practice. He always resented me. He must have known, deep down, what I was. Nothing I ever did could live up to Vasily, and Vasily never did anything of note. And when he wasn’t comparing me to Vasily and finding me lacking, he was ignoring my existence. But that’s not even the worst of it. He was a terrible king, a terrible person. A rapist, a man so entrenched in his own privilege that he couldn’t see what he did to Genya, and who knows how many other powerless servant girls, as wrong. The world is better off without him. So why…” Nikolai touches his fingers to his cheeks and looks both surprised and resentful that they come away wet. “Why am I crying over him?”

Zoya doesn’t know what to do with that. She’s never gotten this far in a relationship with anyone, never had to be the emotional backbone for someone else. She’s never cared enough about anyone to want that. Her personal brand of comfort has always been a witty insult, a toss of the hair and a withering glare sent in the direction of the problem. She doesn’t think any of that will help now. She briefly considers just taking him to bed, hoping all of his anger and sadness and frustrations will be worked out with a good tumble, but that’s not exactly the best way to enter into a marriage. Also, while in the past she may have just wanted to ignore the problem and hope it goes away, with Nikolai she feels differently. It actually hurts to see him in pain like this, and she wants it to go away for his sake, not just so it will stop inconveniencing her. 

She’s never been good with soft comfort, but she tries her best anyway. She pulls him toward her, and with her seated on his desk and him slumped in his chair, it ends with his face buried in her stomach. She runs her hand through his hair, and they stay that way for a while. After several moments of silence, she says “When I was nine, my mother tried to marry me off to a sixty-three year old pedophile.”

Nikolai goes very still for a moment, then pulls back to look at her. He doesn’t say anything, but there is a gravity in the way he looks at her, as if he knows this is the first time she’s ever said it out loud. 

“His name was Valentin Grankin, and he was rich. We didn’t have money, and he took notice of me, so my mother thought it would be for the best. The only thing that saved me was the sudden appearance of my Grisha powers. And my aunt.” Zoya pauses then. The memory of her aunt is still painful, knowing the end she suffered. But it’s more than just the memory of Lilyana. It is the wound her mother’s actions opened in her. It has been festering for thirteen years, and she has never tended to it. She has covered it up with anger and hate and moved forward, but she has never stopped moving forward long enough to acknowledge the hurt of it. How thoroughly betrayed she felt as her mother tried to sell her off, to turn her into somebody else’s problem. “My mother was a terrible person, too,” she tells Nikolai. 

He is quiet for a long moment, but he takes her hand gently. “My mother was a terrible person,” Zoya continues, “But I don’t miss her. I don’t ever want to see her again.”

“So you’re saying I should shut down any feelings about my father? Be glad he’s dead and move on?”

“No,” Zoya says, squeezing his hand tightly. Nothing is coming out the way she wants it to. Maybe she should have gone with the good tumble after all. “All I’m saying is, you’re not special for having been raised by a monster. But we’re different people. Even though I won’t mourn my monster, I won’t think less of you for mourning yours.” She doesn’t understand his feelings of sadness over a man who never loved him, but she won’t fault him for it. In fact, a part of her admires it. Zoya covered up her anger and sadness with thorns and callouses, and let them grow until there was no pruning to be done. Maybe that makes her heartless, but she’s not as sure about that as she was a year ago. “You don’t have to be polished and pristine all the time, Nikolai. It’s not a character flaw for you to grieve. It’s a testament to your goodness.” She brushes a stray lock of hair off his forehead, and he smiles slightly, leaning into her touch. 

“I’m sorry for what she did to you,” he says, looking her hard in the eyes as he says it so she knows it is true. Zoya starts to shrug it off, but he interrupts her. “I know you think it doesn’t matter anymore, that your pain is insignificant, but I want you to know that it matters to me. I’m not going to ask you to feel differently about her, or to grieve the loss of your innocence. But you can’t stop me from feeling that for you.”

Zoya is shocked to find tears welling up in her eyes. No one, save Lilyana, has ever known her so well, ever felt pain simply for the way she was treated. And as she threads her fingers through Nikolai’s she feels the web of thorns around her heart loosen the smallest bit. It is a new feeling, but not an unwelcome one. In fact, it is one she thinks she could find herself getting used to.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a slightly different format from the others, since it's more of a speedrun through a period of years instead of an isolated incident. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but yolo amirite? 
> 
> More notes about the actual content of the chapter at the end

Zoya had never pictured herself as a mother. Of course, when she’d married into a royal family, the choice had mostly been taken away from her. Producing heirs was a part of the gig. And it wasn’t as though she hated children, or that she’d done it against her will; she’d just never thought she possessed much maternal sentiment. Looking back, she’s still not sure how she ended up a mother of four. 

Dominik’s birth was carefully planned. About the time of their first wedding anniversary, Nikolai’s advisors started hinting strongly that an heir was expected, and soon. This went on for about three months before the hints became a command. And since neither Nikolai nor Zoya took well to being told what to do, they’d agreed to begin the process, and then spent the next two months doing everything but the thing that would result in a pregnancy. But eventually, they both agreed that they needed to give in—after all, if rumors of fertility issues started to fly, the eventual pregnancy would be suspect to the same kind of rumors the king had faced all of his life. So, two years and some change after their wedding, Zoya went into labor in the middle of a council meeting, and still managed to negotiate a reduced interest rate on a new loan from the Kerch despite the contractions. 

She’d taken to motherhood better than she’d expected, although Nikolai and Genya and even David had to badger her into letting them take over some of her workload in the months after the baby was born. She’d nursed him during meetings with the Triumvirate and used the nights when he wouldn’t sleep to brainstorm new ideas for the nongovernmental Grisha organization she was working on putting into place or find new ways to cut costs and fund projects. 

However, as Dom got older, the more he misbehaved, and the closer she got to being the harsh mother she’d never wanted to be, the kind of mother that she’d grown up with. When, at the age of four, he manages to capture a crow that was flapping around the grounds and release it during a state dinner, she feels her legendary temper come to the surface, something it has never done with him before. Nikolai manages to do some fast talking to keep the guests under control, while Tolya manages to get a hold of the bird and gently escort it outside. Zoya sends Dom to his room with the nanny, there to wait until the dinner is through. 

She’s still angry two courses later, and Nikolai tries to calm her down as they go to have a word with their son, saying, “I was the same way when I was his age. In fact I was the same way when I was twice his age.”

“Oh, so I have you to blame for all of this then.”

“Oh, come on, Zoya, it was one bird in the great hall. He’s four, and we got it under control quickly enough.”

“It’s not just the bird in the great hall. It’s the finger painting on the portraits of your ancestors, and the running and the yelling and the summoning inside the palace, which I have explicitly told him not to do at least twelve times. And that’s just in the last week.” 

By then they’ve come to his nursery, but Nikolai stops her before they open the door, and puts his hands on his shoulders. “Look, darling, love of my life, infinite in wisdom and poise, I defer to your expertise a lot, but not right now. I understand what it’s like to grow up in this gilded cage with all these expectations. He’s a restless kid with a wicked case of curiosity mixed with unsafe levels of boredom and loneliness. I was that kid. Let me talk to him about it. I’ll even scold him for you, but maybe I can help him without making him afraid for his life.”

She opens her mouth to object, but then closes it again. She remembers her own mother’s anger when she’d tried to do the right thing to impress her over and over again to no avail. She’d just wanted to show her mother love and kindness, and in his weird little four-year-old mind, Dom had probably just wanted to show his parents what he’d found, to make them proud. So she sighs and gestures for Nikolai to head in alone. He plants a kiss on her forehead and ducks in, sending the nanny home for the night as he goes. 

When he comes to bed later that night he tells her it’s all handled, and Zoya believes him. She should have known better, because a week later, when they eat dinner just the three of them in their private quarters, Dom looks up at his parents and asks, “When is the new baby getting here?” 

Zoya’s fork slides across the china with a horrible shriek and Nikolai chokes on his glass of wine. While he’s still coughing, she turns and asks Dom what exactly he means by that. 

“Papa told me.”

She raises a disbelieving eyebrow at her husband, who has recovered enough to quickly say, “No, no I didn’t” in Zoya’s direction before turning to Dom and asking, “Why do you think there’s going to be a new baby?” 

“You said. When you came to talk to me about the bird. You said that we could have somebody new to play with. And then I told Anya and she said that her mommies told her that too and then after that they got Baby Pieter. So that means we’re gonna get a new baby too, right? Just like Miss Tamar and Miss Nadia?”

“Oh,” Nikolai says, though Zoya’s still not sure she’s following. “No, buddy. When I said that we could find you a new friend to play with, I meant a friend your age, who can start school with you in a couple of months. Someone with his own set of parents, who would play with you but then go home at the end of the day. Not a new brother like Anya has.” 

“Oh.” Dom’s face falls, and Zoya jumps in to change the subject before Nikolai can offer to procure a hundred new babies just to keep their son happy. He’s always been a sucker for those big hazel eyes.  
However, when Zoya brings up the incident while getting ready for bed that night, he asks, “Would it really be so bad? Having another one?”

And there’s the issue. No, it wouldn’t be bad at all. In fact, when she’d held Tamar and Nadia’s newly adopted baby Pieter a few months ago, she’d had the same thought. And just a two weeks ago, Adrik and Leoni had announced that they were having a baby. She’d even heard that Princess Ehri, her husband’s not-so-jilted ex-fiancee, had settled down and had a baby less than a year ago. And maybe all these babies were making her miss the days when Dom was so little that he didn’t ask his parents awkward questions at the dinner table. Even the delivery and the subsequent nights of two hours of sleep didn’t seem so bad. And, she has to admit, they haven’t managed to screw up the kid they already have yet. She knows that Nikolai has wanted another baby for a while, but he already feels like he pushed her with the last one (it wasn’t him, it was the advisors and their duties as king and queen, but she knows he still feels guilty), so he hasn’t even mentioned it to her before now. But she’s seen the way he holds Baby Pieter any chance he gets, and the way he only half-jokingly offered himself as a babysitter for Adrik and Leoni when the baby comes. And maybe, just maybe, she’s a sucker for hazel eyes, too. 

If Dominik is Nikolai’s boy through and through, then Liliyana is Zoya. She is the spitting image of her mother, which Zoya finds more than fair, since she did all the hard work when it comes to bringing her into the world. She’s just as beautiful a child as Zoya was, and it worries her sometimes, since she remembers Valentin Grankin. But, despite her fears to the contrary, Zoya is nothing like her mother. She can protect Lili the same way the girl’s namesake protected Zoya. There are some fundamental differences between Zoya and her daughter, and she sometimes finds herself wondering whether these are the result of Lili’s privileged upbringing, or simply the influence of the girl’s father. She usually decides it’s a bit of both. She’s generally a happier child than Zoya ever was, although she has inherited the wicked temper and withering glare. She has less of an occasion to use it, though, because she grows up safe and loved, never having to develop the kinds of thorns Zoya did to ward off those who would hurt her. 

Her life continues, her children grow happy, healthy, and more powerful by the day, while her husband ages and she does not, but she has so much making her life full now, that she finds she doesn’t dwell on the prospect of his mortality often. 

Until it’s not just his mortality she has to worry about anymore.Her oldest two children are shaping up to be incredibly powerful Grisha. They will have long lives, as well, possibly even as long as hers. But then come the twins. 

Dom and Lili were planned, to some degree. This is not the case with her third pregnancy. She’s thirty-five, as old as her aunt was when her mother had said she was going to be an old maid forever because she was past child-bearing age. Looking back, Zoya knows that thirty-five is really not old at all, and there are many women older than that who have children, but she also knows her perpetually twenty-two-year-old fertility isn’t helping. She goes to see Genya after her monthly nuisance is three weeks late, and sure enough, the Corporalnik can sense another heart beating inside her. Genya is, of course, ecstatic. Genya herself had given birth to her own son, Isaak, not too long after the Darkling fell for a second time, and the birth had nearly killed her. She and David have no other children, and since Isaak is now almost thirteen, Genya has been living vicariously though various friends.

A month later, she has gotten over her initial disappointment at finding herself pregnant again, and while she is not over the moon, she is reasonably excited for another child. That’s when Genya tells her it’s not one child, but two. “Twins?” Nikolai asks when Genya says she senses a total of three heartbeats from Zoya’s body. When Genya nods excitedly and claps her hands, he looks to his wife and says, “Well, Tolya and Tamar will be thrilled.”

Preparations are made for two new royal babies, and when they are born, the whole country celebrates. The girls, named Lada and Alina, in postmortem defiance of a man who had ruined the lives of their namesakes, are identical in every way, except one.

They don’t discover it until the girls are already five years old. All their lives so far, they have reached milestones within hours of each other—when Alina took her first steps, it was only a matter of minutes before Lada was toddling after her. So, when Lada summons a gust of wind that knocks a particularly ugly vase that used to belong to Nikolai’s mother off its perch, they expect Alina to do the same soon. However, weeks pass, and she is no closer to summoning than she was before. Zoya brings the girls to the Grisha examiner, who confirms her suspicions—while Lada is Grisha, Alina is not. 

Zoya takes it harder than she would have thought. She is not prejudiced against those who do not possess the Grisha gift the way the Darkling was. She knows her daughter still has all the potential to be great, just look at her father. But knowing that Alina will never know the rush of freedom that comes from summoning, that she will not attend classes with her siblings in the Little Palace, that the safe haven for Grisha her mother is trying so hard to bring to fruition will only mean something to her because it means something to those she loves—knowing all of this breaks Zoya inside. And there is all that will come years from now, as Zoya watches not only her husband age and die and leave her here, but she knows she will watch the same thing happen to her daughter, and she is not certain that she will be able to stand there, powerless, and watch it happen.

While this preparatory grief overwhelms her, she is careful not to let it show. She doesn’t explicitly tell Nikolai, although she thinks he senses it. And when other, younger Grisha say things like “Such a shame about your daughter,” Zoya makes sure to pull the air from their lungs, because no one talks about her family that way. 

While Zoya loves her non Grisha child as much as she loves her Grisha children, she sees the toll it takes on Alina to be the one left out. After Lada reveals herself as Grisha, she begins her lessons at the Little Palace, and for the first time, Alina is left without a partner in crime. Nikolai throws himself into making Alina feel appreciated, taking her sailing on the lake, and allowing her to design whatever she wants in his workshops, no matter how much it goes against the laws of physics. Zoya catches him some nights, hunched over his desk, trying his hardest to make her childish drawings reality, transferring them to blueprints and then building them from scratch. She always feels a funny pang in her stomach when she catches him doing this. It is a rush of affection so intense that it catches her off guard, but swiftly on the heels of that affection often comes the melancholy feeling of knowing that this will not last forever. The years are passing by, and while none of them show in her physicality, she feels each and every one etched in her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a little bit of me getting my bearings on Zoyalai's children as they exist in my mind, and also an exploration of a concept that's never really touched on in the books. 
> 
> I've always wondered exactly how Grisha power is passed down (is it hereditary? is it environmental? i have no answers) and i wanted to look into the idea that Grisha parents don't automatically have Grisha children. I also like the idea of identical twins being a Grisha/non-Grisha pair, hence the birth of our twins and a little added angst for Zoya later on.


	6. Chapter 6

When Dom is nineteen, he meets Petra Kozlova, the daughter of Ravka’s brand new prime minister, and Nikolai and Zoya have the pleasure of watching their son fall head-over-heels in love for the first time. It’s almost laughable, really, how quickly he becomes smitten with her. 

“And,” he says at dinner one night, continuing a rambling sentence about all of the things Petra has been able to do in her short life before she came to live in Os Alta to support her father, “she’s studied at the University at Ketterdam, which I have wanted to see for forever—”

“No, you haven’t,” Lili puts in. “Just last week you said formal education was a sham.”

“That is not true. I believe there is a lot of merit in institutions of higher learning—”

“You can’t sit still for more than five minutes and now you want to be stuck in a lecture hall for hours at a time? You’re just saying that because you think Petra will fall in love with you if you like all the same things.”

“I am not!”

“Petra’s pretty,” seven-year old Lada puts in from the other end of the table.

Alina nods in agreement, “I like her hair. And she always wears nice earrings.”

Zoya is mostly tuning out this conversation, her mind preoccupied with all of the events she’ll have to attend to show support for this change of power to an elected official before she and Nikolai can actually have some time to breathe without worrying that the country will fall apart in the meantime. Her husband catches her eye from across the table and raises an eyebrow paired with a fond smile as if to say _young love, right?_ Out loud he says, “Petra seems like a lovely young woman. But I have to agree with Lili here, Dom. You wouldn’t last a day in Ketterdam University before you’d be begging us to unenroll you.”

“You’re one to talk,” Zoya says. “You wanted out of there so bad you assumed an entirely new identity and became a pirate.”

“Privateer. And I realize that. That’s how I know Dom would never last. He’s too much like me.” He sends a wink towards their son, before standing up to clear away the dishes. “Now, the girls all have a last minute fitting with the tailor for your dresses for the banquet tomorrow.” Three groans in unison. “I know, I know. But think of it this way, once you get through these few days and the transition of power goes smoothly, we can actually take some time as a family away from this city. No diplomatic duties. An actual, real-life vacation. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

The girls all grumble their assent, and get up from the table. Nikolai gives Zoya’s shoulder a squeeze as he passes by and drops a kiss on her hair. “I have some work to get done in my office, so I’ll drop the girls off with Olga.” Then he and the girls are gone from the room, and Zoya is left with her son. 

“Petra seems nice,” she says after a moment’s silence. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with her since she got here. Have you made a move yet?”

Dom blushes. “Mama.”

Zoya shrugs. “Tomorrow’s banquet would be a good time.”

He’s silent for a moment, but without his little sisters or his father here to tease him, he actually considers it. “Maybe I will,” he says without looking up from his now-empty plate. 

Zoya smiles, always amazed by the fact that her son, who is so much like Nikolai in personality it almost seems unfair, is much more willing to be open and vulnerable with her than with his father. “You should do it. There’s no harm in seeing if she reciprocates.” She hesitates for a moment, unsure if she wants to say this now, or wait until the problem actually presents itself. She decides to go for it, figuring it is best to warn him before he gets too involved. “Dom…” she starts, and then is unsure how to proceed. She barrels on anyway. “Before you let your heart get too invested in Petra, you should consider the fact that she’s…well…she’s not Grisha.”

Whatever Dom thought she might say, that is not it. He looks up at her in shock, and she knows that he has his “otkazats’ya aren’t worth any less than Grisha” speech ready. She’s heard him deliver it to the young Squallers he helps to train, and it always makes her smile. She’s sure he’d never expect to have to give the speech to his own mother though. Before he can start berating her for being prejudiced, she holds up a hand and continues. 

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Obviously. Some of my favorite people are otkazats’ya. Your father and sister, namely. But you’re old enough now that you really need to think about what your life is going to look like, and how it will differ from someone like Petra’s. You’re a powerful Grisha, Dominik. There are advantages to that, but there is also a burden that comes with all that power.” She takes a deep breath. She’s never discussed the way the mortality of her loved ones weighs on her. She thinks Nikolai and Genya both know, to some degree, although neither can fully understand it. Nikolai will not have to worry about it, as, barring some horrible tragedy, he’ll be the first in their family to go. That comes with its own weight, she knows, but it is not the same. And while Genya loves deeply, the two people she loves most are David and Isaak, both equally as powerful, and likely to be around the same amount of time. It is only Zoya who faces life as an eternally young and beautiful widow. But as she watches Dom fall for a girl with a thoroughly average life expectancy, she feels she ought to warn him of the heartbreak ahead. 

“I love your father more than I can say. But I also know that he’s going to die. Most likely not in the immediate future, but sooner than I would like. And with all the power I have been given, I know I’m not likely to follow him. Not for centuries, at least, and possibly not ever. The prospect of those centuries is…terrifying. I know that you and Lili and Lada are most likely destined for those centuries as well. But Petra isn’t. So before you fall too hard for her, you need to consider what a future with her will cost you.”

Dom is silent for a long moment. She knows this is probably the first time he has had to confront his own longevity, and it is not an easy thing to process, she knows from experience. So she allows him this silence but gives him the comfort of knowing she is not going anywhere while he thinks. Eventually, he looks up at her and asks. “If someone had warned you before you married him, would you have done it? If you’d known how much it was going to hurt, would you have stayed away?”

It catches Zoya off guard. She supposes she’s never really thought about that before. By the time she realized how much losing Nikolai was going to hurt, she was already too far gone. But as she ponders Dom’s question, the answer is clear. 

“No,” she says, “If I had stayed away, I would have saved the hurt, but I never would have had this. I never would have had you or your sisters. The life I’ve had with him is better than any life I would have had without. Even if it is going to end.”

Dom nods, and gets up from the table. He gives her a hug before clearing away their plates and retreating to his room. 

At the banquet the next day, Zoya watches Dom ask Petra Kozlova to dance, and she wonders if maybe he’s more like his mother than she had previously thought.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I am back! 
> 
> Sorry for the two and a half month silence, but 2020 is turning out to be a real bitch of a year. I started the year with a terrible three week sinus infection, then had to move back to school, apply to grad school, and, just this past weekend, move back home due to public health concerns. 
> 
> Anyway, now that I'll be home for the foreseeable future, hopefully I will finally be able to finish this with all the time I have on my hands. 
> 
> We're gearing up for the end, so be aware, this is the sad part. This will be the first of anywhere between 2-5 chapters finishing up this story (and also Nikolai's life oops) depending on where I decide to put the breaks in. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

It won’t be much longer. This is something that all of the royal physicians and healers are avoiding saying, but it’s obvious in the holes and the pauses they take when they update her on the king’s condition. The pneumonia is back, and while he’d beaten it a few years ago, his immune system has been wrecked ever since, and the strain seems infinitely worse this time around. He has lost far more weight than she would have thought possible, and he can barely get through a sentence without it sounding like he’s run a mile. It hurts, to watch him waste away while she stands there, the picture of health and youth and beauty. 

And yet, even now, when they both know they only have days left, there is still a part of him so stubborn and impossible, she can’t help but laugh when she enters their room to find him annotating the margins of a book on poetry, likely a gift from Tolya, as if he anticipates having the time for a rousing discussion about the Second Epic of Kregi in the near future, and wants to be prepared. He hears her laugh and looks up. “Oh good,” he says, his voice stronger than it’s been the last few days, but still weaker than he would ever want to sound. “You’re here. You can’t imagine how bored I’ve been. You know I’ve never been one to sit still, but these damned nurses tell me it’s not good for me to be out and about with my immune system so compromised. As if I’m not already—” he breaks off into a coughing fit, sparing Zoya from hearing her husband talk about his death with all the gravity of a discussion of the Little Palace’s breakfast menu. 

She helps ease him back down to the bed when the fit is over, and he’s too exhausted to protest. She runs her hand through his hair—gone gray decades ago but still as thick as it was when he was young. It’s something he’s ridiculously proud of, particularly since Tolya’s hairline began to recede and the last time they saw their old friends at the Keramzin orphanage, Mal’s hair had thinned out completely. Nikolai has made a quip about how if Alina had only accepted his marriage proposal, she’d still have something to hold onto in the bedroom, for which he earned a smack from both Zoya and Alina. 

“Lada and Dmitri have arrived,” Zoya says, pushing away the memories that seem to come incessantly now that she knows she has so few left to make with him. “Are you good to see the kids now, or shall I have them come back in an hour?”

“Just…give me…” They sit in silence for a moment as he takes a few labored breaths and then gestures for her to help him sit up. She does, fussing with the pillows propping him up so that it looks like he’s doing more to keep himself in a sitting position than he actually is. Then she goes to the door and lets the children in. They leave their spouses and children out in the sitting room, and as the bedroom door closes, Zoya takes a moment to observe her strange family. Lilyana, despite having a teenage daughter of her own, doesn’t look any older than Zoya does. In fact, the queen and eldest princess are more identical now than the actual pair of identical twins. Lada still looks young, but closer to thirty than her mother or older sister. Alina, on the other hand, is thirty-nine, and looks her age, without Grisha power to keep her young. Dominik, who passed fifty last year, has decided he is going to be twenty-nine for the rest of his life. It’s a strategy that works better on him than the noble ladies who try the same.

The children all squeeze his hand or kiss him on the cheek before making themselves comfortable, Dom perched on the edge of the bed, Lili leaning against a bedpost, the twins in the seats on either side of the bed. Zoya leans against the wall, a bit removed. 

“I’ve gathered you all here today to discuss my imminent demise,” Nikolai states, as matter-of-fact as if he had brought them in to discuss the weather, or an upcoming trip to Novyi Zem. 

She sees their children flinch, and Lili even admonishes him with a stern “Papa,” that wavers just enough to dull the intended effect.

Nikolai gives them a smile that is half apology, half fond teasing. “I’m sorry, but there’s no point in beating around the bush here.” He takes a deep breath that begins to waver before it catches and sends him into a coughing fit. The rest of them wait in tense silence until it settles down. Alina gently hands him a glass of water. “Thank you,” he says, his voice sounding a bit weaker than before. “We all know what is coming, and we have to meet it head on. Running from the truth never helped anyone. There are matters we need to discuss before that happens. One matter in particular. The future of the crown.”

Zoya sees all of her children tense, but none more than Dom. She knows the anxiety her son feels over stepping into his father’s shoes. He has been the heir apparent to the throne of Ravka his entire life, but she remembers him telling her years ago that that throne scares him more than anything. 

Nikolai’s gaze falls on Dom, who is steadfastly avoiding it. He reaches out to place a hand on his son’s arm, and says gently, “It’s only yours if you want it. No one is making you take on this burden.” He looks at the girls in turn after that. “No one is”—a wheeze— “making any of you take on this burden. If none of you wants it, I’ll dissolve the monarchy, effective immediately upon my death. You can all chalk it up to my ego.” Zoya smiles half-heartedly at the joke, unable to feel at ease with his light-hearted mentions of life after his death. “So, Dom, do you want it?”

Dom shakes his head immediately. Nikolai nods at him and says, “That’s alright. Lili?”

“No.”

“Alina?”

Another shake of the head. 

“Lada?”

“No. Sorry, Papa.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. I figured as much anyway.” Nikolai draws a piece of paper and a pen toward him, and signs with a flourish. It’s an amendment to the constitution, to be put into effect with the rest of the items in his will. “I suppose now is as good a time as any to inform you that you don’t have a drop of royal blood in you.”

“What?” Lili asks incredulously. 

“Oh, you know,” Nikolai waves her concern away. “I’m a bastard. As common as they come. Thank the Saints I was born a bastard in a royal family. I wasn’t meant to live the life of a layman. You all enjoy it for me, though.”

After another bout of coughing, although a fairly mild one, Nikolai declares that the stuffy government business is over, and has Zoya usher in their sons- and daughter-in-law, as well as their grandchildren. They all stay there in that room, laughing and talking and swapping stories, and Zoya is painfully aware that this may be the last time they’ll all be together without a gaping hole in the family where her husband should be.


	8. Chapter 8

After the children and their families retire for the night, Zoya and Nikolai are left alone in their bedroom. The hours of conversation, laughter, and steadfast ignorance of the ticking clock have worn her husband out, so she just sits on the edge of the bed with him. He puts a hand over hers—wrinkles and liver spots on top of the scars from the thorn wood and black marks from the demon they were never able to fully vanquish. They are not pretty hands, but she loves them all the same. She meets his eyes, still the warm and clever hazel she remembers from the first time she met the real Nikolai, not the faces he presented to the world. 

It was right after they had defeated the Darkling—the first time, that is. When the Fold had begun to crack open and draw back she’d heard him cry out from above them as the demon lost its hold on him. She’d caught him with and updraft—or at least she’d tried to. He was falling so fast she couldn’t stop him from hitting the ground hard, but she knew he’d eventually be grateful that he was alive to feel those broken ribs. He’d been mostly incoherent, shell-shocked and still in pain when she’d reached him. He was unresponsive as she’d helped him to his feet and slung his arm over her shoulder. Zoya had always been somewhat petite, a fact that had always irked her, but she’d managed to haul him to the skiff with Mal and Alina and the rest of the people she’d come to think of as family. Tolya and Tamar, the only people who might be able to do something for his physical condition had their hands full keeping Alina and Mal alive and hidden from the others, so Zoya deposited Nikolai against the skiff’s hull and scrounged up a blanket. 

It was only as she wrapped the blanket around his shoulders that he seemed to notice her at all. He didn’t quite make eye contact, but he did murmur a thank you. She’d waved off his thanks and looked around for something, anything, to do—the country was in chaos, shouldn’t she be doing something other than playing nursemaid?—but found that Nadia and Adrik had already taken to summoning winds to push the skiff along, and there was nothing they could do for the rest of the country while the Shadow Fold was still in the process of disappearing behind them. Nothing other than making sure the country’s new king was in a shape to put it back together. So she’d sat back down across from Nikolai and tried to pull his attention from the darkness still staining his fingers while she informed him of what had happened since his transformation. 

It was when they’d gotten back to the mansion that she felt they’d truly met for the first time. Zoya was so exhausted from the fight and the war and the fact that Genya had thrown her arms around Zoya and sobbed when they’d first returned that she didn’t have the energy to put on any airs or ego or indifference when she stumbled upon him in one of the upstairs bedrooms. 

They’d managed to procure a first army uniform for him, knowing he wouldn’t have time to recover before he had to be the brand new king of a war-torn country. They’d given him the privacy to dress himself, but after a suspicious amount of time, Zoya had decided to check on him. She found him with his shoulders hunched as he attempted to get his hands to stop shaking enough to button his own shirt. At the time, she hadn’t had enough in her to reach for sympathy and gentleness, neither of which wouldn’t have helped anyway. So she’d marched into the room, knocked his hands away, and done up the shirt buttons, an action she would repeat many times over the course of their relationship to come. It was as she was bent over to do up the buttons on his breeches—there were two columns of five, which she felt was far too many obstacles to overcome when it came to putting on pants, or taking them off for that matter—that she heard him say a phrase she hadn’t heard from him before, or since. 

“I can’t do this.” It came out a hoarse whisper, and if she’d heard it before that day, she would have been floored by the fear and vulnerability in his voice. But at that point she’d seen and heard so many horrible things in just one day that there was nothing left to shock her.

“I know that, that’s why I’m dressing you. We’ll have to bring your valet out from Os Alta, because I may not be around to do your buttons for you every time, and even if I were, that’s a job that is beneath me.” 

He huffed a hollow laugh. “That’s not what I meant.” 

She finished with the last button and straightened up. She met his eyes, and there was a fear there that she recognized—she saw it every time she looked in the mirror. “I know that, too.” She directed him to the seat by the vanity, and knelt down to help him into his boots. 

“How am I supposed to lead this country, Zoya? I can’t even handle tying my own shoes. How can I pull a country together? Who’s going to listen to me?”

“I’m sure the shakes are just an after-effect of the transformation. They’ll go away soon.” 

“It’s not that. Well, not just that. Every time I look at my hands they get worse.” He held them out, and she got a good look at them for the first time. There was the roughness around his nails of years-old scars, although she’d never seen them before. _From the claws_, she realized. But those were not the most unsettling scars. That was the unnatural darkness that traced his veins and covered his fingertips as if they’d been dipped in ink. “I’m a monster,” he whispered, so quietly she could barely hear, despite the fact that he was only a foot or so away. “Who will want a monster for a king?”

“There are times that being a monster may come in handy,” she tells him, equally as soft. “Your subjects won’t object to taxes if they think you may try to eat them.”

It is a joke he will make to her years later, but it is not well-received then. He flinches badly. She doesn’t backtrack; it’s not like her to apologize for things she says. She just moves on. She has to get him out of this room and functional enough to take control of the military and bring some sort of stability if Ravka has a chance of surviving. So she instructs him to drink some of the coffee Genya brought for him and sets off in search of a pair of gloves. When she presents him with some fine leather gloves stolen from the owner of the mansion, she can see him anchor himself on them. If he doesn’t have to see the problem, he can pretend it isn’t there. She watches him pull on his royal face just as easily as he pulls on the gloves, and only then does it occur to her that she’d been seeing under the mask at all. 

And oh, how things have changed since then. It has been many years since she has seen him wear one of his masks around her or their friends. The Nikolai who couldn't have a conversation with someone without molding his personality into what the other person wanted to see has not existed for a long time. She is glad of it, for that Nikolai is so inhuman that it scares her now to think of it. To think of how lonely it must have been.

Thinking about that first conversation they had is a stark reminder of the years gone by. They have lived a life together, one that is full of good moments and bad, light and dark, and it is almost at its end. Nowadays Zoya vacillates wildly between not wanting to miss a single moment with him until he’s gone and getting lost in the memories of the things they will never do again. Her mind is flooded with memories of him sneaking up behind her and grabbing her around the waist just to make her give him that exasperated look he seemed to love so much. 

Of nights when the two of them would be strategizing in the war room until the candles and their energy burned into nothing. Of how, on those nights, just when she’d start to feel the most hopeless, he would grab her by the hands and pull her into a waltz with no music, which would quickly dwindle down into the two of them standing in each others’ arms, keeping the hopelessness at bay for one more night. 

Of the time he took her sailing across the True Sea on the _Volkvolny_ for their honeymoon, and she’d been seasick the entire way, but he’d stood by her at the rail and held her hair out of her face while she evacuated her stomach.

She thinks of the way his fingers would trace the scars on her back, and the way she’d trail her fingers along the line of swallow tattoos down his spine—“one for every crossing of the True Sea,” he’d told her on the first night they’d spent together—and she thinks about his insistence that even though she spent the entire trip vomiting over the rail, she deserved her own swallow after their honeymoon. She remembers the way he held her hand when Tolya had done the tattoo—on her foot, because she wasn’t getting half-naked in front of Tolya just so he could put a stupid bird on her back—and how she’d squeezed it so hard he’d had to write left-handed for the next week. 

She thinks of the way he’d make her laugh in the middle of making love, and how when she started to laugh, he’d laugh, and then they’d have to stop for a minute just to catch their breath. 

Of how, of all the men she’d been with over the years, he was the only one who could make her stop taking herself so seriously. 

Of the goofy grin that Dom inherited, that was so unkingly it almost proved that he didn’t have a drop of royal blood in him. She wishes she’d catalogued every one of those grins, because as she sits here now, knowing they only have days or hours or minutes left, she knows that she is really going to miss it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for being MIA for the last six months, but well *gestures to everything*
> 
> also apologies in advance for this chapter

Zoya bids farewell to the children and their friends who have come to visit and shuts the door to their chambers for the night. This has been their routine for the last week. Those who know and love Nikolai gather together to spend what precious little time they have left with him. They talk and reminisce and shower him with love until it is clear he is exhausted, at which point Zoya herds them out the door. They will head to their own rooms to sleep and hope that he will still be there in the morning when they wake. 

“You know,” Nikolai says as she begins to extinguish the candles. “These gatherings are nice, but it’s getting a bit awkward being the only one at them who’s dying.” 

Zoya shoots him a half-hearted glare, but it pales in comparison to what she is usually capable of. She feels like a wet towel-- wrung out of all her tears, but limp and spent anyway. As she turns begins to dress for bed, he whistles and says, “I think this is the view I’m going to miss the most.” 

The fact that he has it in him to flirt with her is a good sign, but one she tries not to read too much into. The physicians have told her he will have good days, bursts of energy like this, but they have been clear that it is not a sign of recovery. Everyone knows there will be no recovery from this. 

She extinguishes the last of the lamps and crawls into the bed beside him. She lays her head gently on his frail chest and tries not to think about how she can feel every one of his ribs. He slowly winds a strand of her hair around his finger. “You’re going to have to say it eventually, Zoya.” 

“No. I don’t.”

“Denial is not a good look on you.”

“That’s completely untrue. Everything looks good on me.”

She can feel him smile at this bit of her old, teasing self resurfacing. “You’re right. As always. But it’s denial all the same, and it isn’t healthy.”

“Nikolai, stop.”

“You are many things, Zoya Nazyalensky, but you are not a coward. Why are you afraid to face this?”

“Stop talking.”

“No. I am actively dying, Zoya. I will be dead in a few days, and that’s something you need to—”

She sits up suddenly and places a hand firmly over his mouth. There are tears forming quickly in her eyes, and his face softens a bit when he sees them. She squeezes her eyes shut and two tears roll down her cheeks and hit the bedspread. They stay like that for a moment, no sound but two people breathing in the quiet of this room. Then, he gently removes her hand from his mouth and places it on his chest, where she can feel his heart beating, the rhythm steady as it has always been, if a bit fainter. 

“I know,” she whispers eventually. “I know, but please, don’t make me say it. Don’t do that to me.”

“Okay,” he whispers back. He gently tugs her back down, where she fits in the space against his side, under his arm, just like she always has. The familiarity is both a comfort and a icy dagger to the heart.

How many nights have the spent like this? How many more do they have left? It is the not knowing that threatens to drive Zoya to the brink of madness. 

Eventually, she takes a deep breath, and the familiarity of his scent bolsters her strength, just a bit. “Lie to me,” she whispers into the soft cotton of his shirt.

He gives a soft chuckle. A lifetime ago, he had begged her to lie to him in the confines of a carriage, on the brink of something terrifying and unknown. It seems fitting that they should play this game again, here at the end. 

“Tomorrow morning, the physicians will rush in, and announce that they have found a cure. My recovery will be miraculous, and I will live on for another twenty or thirty years, until you decide you’ve had enough of me, and murder me in my sleep. They’ll arrest you for regicide, but you’ll tell them it was worth it for the sake of a bit of peace and quiet.” 

She laughs, just a bit, even as the tears leak out of her eyes, only to be absorbed by the linens. She tries to imagine life in this lie, tries to picture it and cling to it, but Zoya is nothing if not a realist. It fades quickly into smoke in her minds eye, and she is left with nothing but the all-consuming emptiness his absence will leave behind. 

“I don’t know what comes next,” she admits, her voice smaller than it has ever been. She hates that she is the one seeking comfort from her dying husband. This should be the other way around, but she does not have it in her to be the strong one right now. 

“What comes next,” he says, his voice as gentle as it was with their children when they were small, “is life.” 

“I don’t want a life without you in it.”

“Too bad.” He nudges her chin up so that he can look her in the eyes, even in the dark of the room. “I want you to have a life after this, Zoya. I want you to be happy, even if I’m not there to see it.”

“I’m not sure how to do that,” she whispers.

He’s quiet for a moment, before he says, “You’ll have to forgive me, my talent for reading the future in the stars has always been lacking. But I’ll give it a shot.” He takes a moment to gather himself before he starts. “When I’m gone, you’ll mourn and wonder how you’ll ever go on without me there with my infinite wisdom and wit. It’ll be hard, maybe the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but you’ll make it through. And you won’t be alone. You’ll have the kids, and Genya and David, Tamar and Nadia, Tolya. You’ll all sit around and talk about all your favorite things about me, because what else would there be to talk about?” She flicks him lightly in the chest and he gives her that grin that she loves so much. “It’ll be hard,” he repeats, “but eventually, it’ll get easier. It won’t always hurt so much. You’ll keep kicking ass and taking names, keep changing the world, and you’ll be happy. Maybe you’ll fall in love again. Not until after a sufficient period, but eventually. He won’t be nearly as handsome or funny or royal as me, but he’ll do in a pinch. You’ll meet hundreds, thousands of people who haven’t even been born yet, and you’ll change their lives for the better. And when there’s no one else left who knew me, you’ll be able to tell them all that the last King of Ravka was brilliant and brave and fantastic in bed.” She rolls her eyes at him, but the knot in her stomach has started to unwind, just a little. 

“I have just one favor to ask of you,” he says when she presses her forehead against his, her tears landing softly on his cheeks, where they mingle with his own. 

“Anything,” she whispers.

“Don’t forget me?”

“Nikolai,” she says, her voice made quiet by the tightness in her throat. “How could I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll be back with an epilogue of sorts, hopefully soon. thanks for reading!


End file.
